ULRIK SAMUELSON
In a time when art started to move towards the experience of the viewer and outside the gallery and museum, Ulrik Samuelson brought the painterly experience into something that also took possession of the room. The 1960’s art scene was both vibrant and turbulent, and Ulrik Samuelson, classically trained as an artist at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, among others, felt art was too heavily weighed down by history. He was early on interested in architecture, in form and in paintings relation to architecture. Alongside his painting, he experimented with objects, created sculptures and he added ready-mades into his spatial works. Ulrik Samuelson is a pioneering artist whose spatial embodiments was the beginning of something new.
Ulrik Samuelson has created many public works, such as the metro station Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, and was also professor at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm 1970-78. In the 1990’s Ulrik Samuelson returned to focusing on painting. His abstract landscapes are both conceptual, expressive and romantic. The gold and the black, already present in his early works from the 1960’s, are important elements to the artist in creating his quiet narratives. He balances between the matt and the shimmering, as if the three dimensionality of his early works has been highly condensed into these differences in creating a surface.
Ulrik Samuelson, born 1935 in Norrköping, currently lives and works in Stockholm. Ulrik Samuelson studied at Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, 1953-57, and at the Royal Insitute of Art in Stockholm, 1957-62. Ulrik Samuelson is a professor of painting and held a professorship at the Royal Institue of Art in Stockholm, 1970-78.
Ulrik Samuelson’s work has been exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Nordic Pavilion, The Venice Biennale; Louisiana, Humlebæk; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Museum, Stockholm; Artipelag, Stockholm; Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, Stockholm; Liljevalchs, Stockholm; Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm; Galerie Burén, Stockholm; Norrköping konstmuseum; Eskilstuna konstmuseum; Museo Español de Arte, Contemporáneo, Madrid; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, among others.
Ulrik Samuelson has received The Prince Eugene Medal and was the recipient of the First Prize of 1998 Carnegie Art Award.
Ulrik Samuelson's work is in the permanent collection of National Museum, Stockholm; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Norrköping Art Museum; and Gustav VI Adolf's collection, among others.
Kungsträdgården’s metro station in Stockholm is one of many public works by Ulrik Samuelson. Other examples are the stairwell to Guldrummet, Historiska museet, Stockholm; the entrance to Stockholm City Theater; Parabol, Sveavägen, Stockholm; Central Hall's west wall at the Stockholm Central Station; Filmstaden Sergel, Stockholm and Riksbanken, Stockholm.